Tibetans are no longer pleading, they are declaring

On June 16, 1963, a lone Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, set himself
ablaze in an open marketplace in Siagon to protest religious persecution
under the Diem regime. His action shocked the world, and precipitated
the anti-war movement in the US which led to the end of the Vietnam War
in 1973.

As recently as December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouzizi, a Tunisian
vegetable seller, self-immolated to protest police beatings and the
confiscation of his vegetable cart. His action galvanized the Arab
Spring Revolution against corruption and human rights violations that
led to the fall of the region's despots.

The common thread that
runs through these two episodes is public empathy. The only difference
is the time it took for a resolution. The advent of digital technology
played a major role in the latter.

Tibet has been illegally occupied
by China for over 60 years, and the denial of fundamental human rights
as well the plunder and pillage of its antiquities and natural resources
have been well-documented and voiced around the world. Yet in the face
of the growing number of self-immolations in Tibet, over 90 to date,
the support for this cause appears alarmingly more muffled.

Is
it China's economic might that has silenced politicians and the news
media? Or is it due to the over-whelming guilt that people in
high places are feeling for allowing their greed to override truth and
not standing up to China? It is both. When one is overwhelmed with
guilt, denial is often the means to alleviate the guilt. The time is
more than ripe now for Tibet supporters to let the world know why Tibet
should be free.

We hold the truths of Tibet's independent history and
China's atrocities in occupied-Tibet. In a different world, when the
People's Republic of China was not a member of the United Nations
Security Council, with veto power, these truths generated UN Resolutions
#1353 in 1959, #1723 in 1961 and #2079 in 1965 for the restoration of
fundamental human rights of the Tibetan people and their right to
self-determination. But due to greed and short-sightedness of those in
political power and business during the ensuing decades, planet earth is
now at risk. Let's use social media to share the ultimate truth ..
that a free Tibet will help in the sustainability of planet earth.
Wake up those in high places, as well as the man on the street, in
China and around the world, and tell them that their very survival is
dependent on a free Tibet.

Millions of unregulated Chinese factories
are churning out "Made-in-China" goods while emitting toxins and
pollutants into the atmosphere causing holes in the ozone layer above
Tibet which are contributing to global warming, record melting of
Himalayan glaciers and world climate change. The Chinese name for Tibet
is "Xizang" or "Western Treasure House," and accordingly they have
plundered the Tibetan plateau of its antiquities and
natural resources, while keeping Tibetans under unbearable oppression.

To meet the insatiable demand for raw materials by its manufacturing
base, which includes its medicinal and gourmet palette markets,
China continues to conduct, in Tibet, massive deforestation, drilling
for oil, fracking for natural gas, mining for precious metals,
including uranium for its own nuclear plants and for probable sale to
rogue states, as well as the decimation of Tibet's flora and fauna,
and diverting the run-off from the melting glaciers to China
thus leaving behind dry river beds and parched farmlands in
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and other parts of Asia. The global
warming, caused primarily by China's unregulated factories,
has accelerated the rate of mountain glacial melting thus assuring that
the nuclear wastes, dumped on the Tibetan plateau since the 1980s,
will be washed down river at a much faster rate. With its trade
surplus, China has built massive dams to divert the glacial runoff to
their own farmlands, which ironically, now poses a major health risk to
her own people.

While Tibetans deeply believe in the
interdependent nature of all living things, they cannot begin
environmental healing to promote the sustainability of planet earth
until China's leaders come to their senses and free Tibet. Tibetans are
not sacrificing their lives because they want to live under Chinese
rule. They are dying because they want traditional Tibet returned into
the hands of her rightful owners. They are no longer pleading. They
now are declaring. In the wake of devastating earthquakes, tsunamis,
typhoons and hurricanes, the time is ripe to wake up the world public.